Rubik's Cube production returns to Hungary with a robot line

How the Rubik's Cube began

It started in 1974, when Rubik was teaching design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest. He wanted a three-dimensional object that felt "endless", and built a wooden prototype made of 27 blocks that could turn around several axes.

He soon saw the commercial potential. From 1977, the first 5,000 copies of what was then called the Magic Cube went on sale in specialist shops in the Hungarian capital. Sourcing materials in socialist Hungary was hard, and Rubik says he realised: "We were not ready for this scale of production... We cannot meet the needs of the world market."

A British toy company, and later an American one, took the licence, and production moved abroad. Between 1980 and 1983, which Rubik calls the "first big wave", 200 million cubes were sold. Sales dropped after that, but millions still sell every year, and more than half a billion have been sold in total.

Why the cube is popular again

Speedcubing, meaning competitions where people race to solve it, has given the puzzle another boost. According to the World Cube Association, the current record is 2.51 seconds, set last month in China by nine-year-old Geng Xuanyi.

Steve Radevich, a senior vice president at Spin Master, the Canadian toy company that owns the Rubik's Cube trademark, said the day's motto was "Back to the roots: the cube comes home." Rubik himself calls the cube a "transformable sculpture", a meeting point of art and engineering. He also noted how different the robot line is from the early years, when cubes were put together by hand.